The contenders

Ina Marčiulionyte., Lithuanian ambassador to Unesco; Irina Gueorguieva Bokova, Bulgarian ambassador to Unesco; Ivonne Juez de A Baki, a former Ecuadorian ambassador to the US and a friend of Hillary Clinton; Benita Ferrero-Waldner, nominated by Austria and Colombia and supported by the EU, of which she is commissioner for external relations. (She was foreign minister under Wolfgang Schüssel’s government, which was supported by the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), led at the time by Jörg Haider.)

Alexander Vladimirovich Yakovenko represents the Russian Federation; Farouk Hosny of Egypt and Mohammed Bedjaoui of Algeria represent the Arab world. (Bedjaoui, who is a former ambassador to France and to Unesco and a former president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, has two handicaps: his age, and the fact that he has been nominated by Cambodia and does not have the backing of his own country.) Sospeter Mwijarubi Muhongo of Tanzania and Nouréini Tidjani-Serpos of Benin represent Africa.

Tidjani-Serpos should be distinguished from the other candidates: he is a former deputy permanent delegate (1991-5), then ambassador and permanent delegate of Benin to Unesco (1995-8), a former chairman of the Executive Board (1995-7). Under the Matsuura administration, he has been assistant director-general for Africa. He is also the last remaining “house” candidate, after Matsuura’s failed attempt to impose deputy director-general Marcio Barbosa of Brazil on the member states. In spite of strong pressure, Barbosa, who has played a major role in the scandals that have affected Unesco, did not win the support of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da (...)

(3) Hosny apologised in Le Monde, on 27 May 2008: “I want to solemnly say that I regret the words I used… They came from my indignation at the fate of a [Palestinian] people deprived of their lands and their rights… They must be interpreted in the context of that tragedy.” He has also been criticised in Egypt itself for using culture to serve political ends and mixing public and private interests.